Reminder for Stockona users about impending closure of Google Finance API

Just a friendly reminder to Stockona users:

Google will terminate Finance API on Oct 25, and Google portfolio will no longer works afterwards. For Harmattan and Symbian users, this means you need to set "Bypass Google login" to continue using Stockona. A future update will eliminate Google authentication. For Maemo 5 users, unfortunately this will be the end of the road since I didn't implement local portfolio feature in Maemo 5's version.

I am aware there is an app to run Harmattan app on Maemo 5 and Qt component for fremantle. My N900 died so I cannot test them myself, but I am open to provide the necessary support for people to experiment with those options. If you are interested, contact me through stockona@ovi.com.

Thanks again for using Stockona, and as always feedback are welcomed.

BlackBerry 10 Alpha Device B and info from BlackBerry Jam 2012

Another developer device to play with! I got lucky since I received the notification on the 2nd day of BBJam. Anyway, thanks for the good folks at BB.

Having a device is easier to understand the various Cascade UI elements. I am still not a fan of the native SDK, but one thing it does exceptionally well is the app deployment on device. Fast and generally reliable.

I am looing into porting my app "Stockona" to BB10. Attending BBJam proved pretty helpful for me to quick gather the information. Below is the summary of what I learned, some of them you probably know:

UI

1. Cannot mix regular QML items with Cascade ones. So developers have to choose upfront which one you want to use. For QML/Qt C++ you will use QtCreator for development, for Cascade use native SDK.
2. Be prepared for a significant UI re-write if you use Cascade elements. 
3. ListView manipulation is less straightforwards in Cascade. The API are a little messy, sometimes you have to populate list in Qt C++ and sometimes you can use DataSource in QML to feed the model. Also I feel DataSource should have a callback method....
4. I'm just at the beginning but so far I find these QML-Cascade elements somewhat similar:
   Rectangle - Container
   SelectionDialog - DropDown
   I will keep track of this list in another post as I progress along the porting.
5. No BlackBerry's own Qt components in the near future at least due to resource issue. But seems like it is something they are considering this and plan to offer Qt components eventually.

Qt

1. No Qt5 on device at launch. 
2. BlackBerry's current management team is fairly committed to Qt and do plan to be the Qt mobile platform.

As for BB10, the beta3 software is still an early release. App-wise not much to see if you don't interact with PIM and BBM. I overheard some people complaining about touch sensitivity issue on Alpha device. Well, I notice that but I think BlackBerry will make significant refinements before the launch release.